Between the Lines
by Lily Winterwood
Summary: It starts with a skull and a boy, the most brilliant boy John's ever met. Film fic with Jeux d'Enfants.


**Title:** Between the Lines (or _love me if you dare, because this is just a childish game_)  
><strong>CharactersPairings:** Sherlock, John, a bit of everyone else. Johnlock.  
><strong>Genre:<strong> Romance, Drama  
><strong>RatingsWarnings:** PG-13 bordering on R for language, character death, mild abuse.  
><strong>Summary:<strong> It starts with a skull and a boy, the most brilliant boy John's ever met. Film fic with _Jeux d'Enfants_.  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> I do not own the BBC adaptation of Sherlock or _Jeux d'Enfants_.  
><strong>Notes:<strong> This isn't entirely a film fic, because it mainly takes the premise of Jeux d'Enfants and several key moments. Also, it's also not clear whether John plays Julien and Sherlock plays Sophie or vice versa, because the roles blur a lot.  
>The fic is best read with Sara Bareilles's "Between the Lines".<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Between the Lines<strong>

**(or **_**love me if you dare, because this is just a childish game**_**)**

It starts with a skull and a boy, the most brilliant boy John's ever met.

Or rather, it starts a little before that, when the doctors tell his dad that there's nothing they can do. Tumour in the brain, inoperable, less than a year. John remembers crying.

He also remembers crawling into bed next to his mum that night, his poor mum fighting for her life and losing, and telling her that he'll become a doctor to fix her up and cure her stupid brain tumour because he loves her too much.

His mum cries and laughs through her tears and reaches for something on the bedside table. It's a skull.

"Keep this," she tells him. "Keep it and know that I also love you way too much."

Harry pokes her head in the door soon after and tells John in no uncertain terms that he's to go to bed right now and stop bothering their mum. John acquiesces, clutching the skull to his chest in his sleep that night.

* * *

><p>But it really does start with a skull and a boy, and that boy really is the most brilliant boy John has ever met. The boy has curly dark hair and a deathly pale face. The children at their school gather around him every morning before the bus came by and tease him, laugh at him, call him a freak.<p>

The boy's name is Sherlock.

Sherlock's books and papers are thrown in the mud; Sherlock is pushed to the ground. The bus pulls up, the driver disembarks to help Sherlock pick up his things, and John races out of the house with his own belongings and kneels down next to Sherlock, helping him as well.

"Freak! Freak! Freak! Freak!" the children chant. John looks at Sherlock in the eyes and notices how strange they were. With every angle of the light, their colours change.

"You're Sherlock Holmes," he says.

"Apparently I'm better known as Freak Holmes," Sherlock replies coldly. "How's your mother coping with her sickness?"

John freezes, eyes wide. "How did you…?"

"I observed. You're usually very cheerful, but today you seem extremely downcast and the tag of your shirt's hanging out – most children are sad when someone close to them is sick and it must be your mother because if she was well she'd have tucked your tags in for you."

"Wow, that's brilliant." John feels a smile creep up onto his face. The children continue to jeer and taunt them from the windows of the bus.

"People usually don't say that." Sherlock looks surprised, uncertain. Almost shy.

"What do they usually say, then?"

"Piss off." Sherlock grins at him. John's smile broadens.

"John Watson," he offers, holding out the skull his mum gave him. "You can have this, but I'd like to borrow it once in a while. It's rather important to me."

"You're giving me something, but you also want it back." Sherlock quirks an eyebrow. "Prove that it's important to you. Prove that you deserve to have it back."

John's eyebrows shoot up as well.

"I dare you," whispers Sherlock, expression impish. "Is the game on?"

"The game is on," affirms John, and rushes for the bus to disable the brakes.

* * *

><p>They get into trouble every round, of course. There's no point to a game if it's boring.<p>

John's first dare for Sherlock is to pants the school bully, Anderson. Sherlock handles it with all the ease of a boy who's plotted for that moment all of his life, and John relinquishes the skull feeling slightly cheated.

Then Sherlock dares John to be as vulgar as possible in class. They were listing off nouns that begin with certain letters of the alphabet. John has the letter B, and he lists off "bitch, ball-sucker, big-dick, bastard, bab, bahookie, ball-bag, beaver-cleaver, boobies –" everything he can think of in the short amount of time it takes for the teacher to recover herself, give him a zero, and send him and Sherlock down to the headmaster's office when Sherlock passes him the skull.

"You should have said 'boner'," Sherlock says as they head down the hall.

"Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you're an idiot." Sherlock laughs at John's scowl. "Don't be like that; practically everyone is."

"Fine. Deduce something personal about the headmaster," John whispers as they enter the headmaster's office.

Sherlock outs him.

They are swiftly separated into different classes on different sides of the school building. Harry, who'd taken charge of John since his father's so busy nursing his mother, drags him out of the school by the scruff of his coat after he'd been sent to the head again on account of splashing ink all over the teacher. They pass by Sherlock, who's being told off by a furious teenager in a suit and umbrella. The next dare involves Sherlock smearing cake into that teenager's hair. The results cost him his science equipment for a week.

John has his fair share of discipline – Harry hits hard when she's angry, and harder when she's drunk.

* * *

><p>John imagines that he's flying, flying through cardboard cut-out clouds onto a cardboard cut-out skull where Sherlock also sits, dressed in a dark coat and a blue scarf, and they sit together side-by-side on the skull and look out at the havoc they've caused, laughing.<p>

Sherlock's his friend, and no matter how mad it makes Harry that isn't going to change.

* * *

><p>Harry gets married to a woman named Clara. John scrunches up his face at the reception and tells Sherlock that he'd say no if he ever makes it to the altar.<p>

They're sitting under a table, the table on which the cake is situated. Harry is dancing with Clara, oblivious to their plotting and hidden in the crowd of guests. Sherlock deduces her alcoholism in a second and makes disparaging comments about her outfit. John laughs.

"What are you going to be when you grow up?" he asks.

"A pirate," Sherlock replies. "I'm going to terrorise the seas."

"I'm going to be a doctor," John says. "I'm going to save my mum."

Sherlock nods, pulls out the skull. "Pull the tablecloth," he whispers, eyes twinkling. He's not supposed to be here; his brother Mycroft – the angry teenager in the suit – thinks he's at his violin lesson. John reaches out, tugging at the cloth. The clink and smash of breaking glass is music to their childish ears.

The cake falls, and Sherlock and John scramble away from the crime scene laughing wildly.

"You'll really say no at the altar?" Sherlock asks later, after a tearfully furious Harry tells them off and smacks them about the head. John nods.

"As a dare?" Sherlock's eyes are wide; he's grinning almost shark-like. John nods.

"Yes. The game is on."

A moment later his dad walks in with an ashen face.

* * *

><p>John has never seen his mum looking so frail as she does now, hooked up to the hospital machines. She looks at him, at the skull, and admits that he's not the first to play at dares.<p>

"What was the craziest thing you've ever done?" John asks, patting her hand. She smiles, sad and tired.

"I flew," she whispers.

"You should do that once you get better. Get better, okay? That's a dare."

His mum's eyes twinkle. "You don't have the skull."

"I left it with Sherlock – lemme get it –"

"John." His mother's eyes lose their sparkle and she looks even more fragile than the snowflakes that fall cold onto John's tongue and lashes in the winter. "Stay with me, my little Johnny. I love you far too much."

* * *

><p>When mum dies, Sherlock is at the graveyard with flowers in his arms. He tosses them into the grave, his new blue scarf blowing in the wind. Crying into his father's side, John looks up and smiles.<p>

* * *

><p>"Can I go over to your place for a sleepover?" Sherlock asks. John frowns.<p>

They're at Sherlock's house, a house that's far bigger and much better-kept than John's. Sherlock has his own study, crammed with enough science equipment that it might as well be called a laboratory.

The moonlight shines through the windows into Sherlock's room, and John thinks for a moment that Sherlock looks uncommonly pretty. And then he cringes, shrugs it off.

"No," he says.

"Why?" Sherlock leans in closer; they're almost nose to nose.

"I just don't… want you to see it," John mumbles. "Please."

"That's not much of a reason," Sherlock whispers, breath tickling John's cheeks. "What have you to hide?"

"Nothing! Just promise me you won't go over."

Sherlock leans away. John's almost disappointed. "Fine," Sherlock mumbles.

* * *

><p>Before John knows it they are growing up and apart. Sherlock is chivvied away to independent school in Harrow, and John is lucky enough to find a good comprehensive school where he lives. They may be separated now, but the skull and its game still unites them.<p>

Sunlight filters into Sherlock's room ten years later, causing a seventeen-year-old John to squint and sit up, only to be hit in the head by a pillow.

"What was that for?" he yells at Sherlock, who is fully dressed and grinning, shark-like, at John.

John wipes the grin off his friend's face with another pillow. Sherlock yells, almost indignantly, before he retaliates and pretty soon feathers are flying through the air. Mycroft thunders up the stairs; Sherlock and John quickly hide the evidence.

Mycroft's seven years Sherlock's senior and probably far more intelligent than he. He can tell instantly what they were up to, but he makes no comment. Sherlock turns to John once Mycroft leaves the room, and holds up the skull with a twinkle in his eyes. His room has changed through the years. No longer is it the hideout of a young boy; it is the lair of a seventeen-year-old – two seventeen-year-olds – piled up with experiments, science equipment, charts detailing the various stages of decomposition. On the desk there sits a stack of newspapers detailing the tragic death of a young boy named Carl Powers.

But right now that's far from John's mind. "Not today," he tells Sherlock. "I have a biology test."

"So does Sarah," Sherlock replies, grinning.

"How do you know her? You don't go to our school."

"Her name's the password to your laptop; of course I would know her."

John pauses, splutters. "How –?"

"It wasn't exactly Fort Knox." Sherlock laughs. "Go on, then. She's got nice earrings. Get them for me."

* * *

><p>John hands the earrings to Sherlock after the test. Sherlock laughs and tosses them into the gutter. John nearly bristles in anger and indignation, but Sherlock's laugh is amazingly beautiful and he can't find the guts to glare at Sherlock in this state.<p>

"I rather enjoyed the propositioning," Sherlock remarks as he hands the skull to John. "You _had _to use evolutionary biology?"

"Well, we can't all make pulse-taking look like an art, you dirty bastard," John replies good-naturedly. They spot her farther down the hall, talking to Sebastian Wilkes. John grins mischievously, and Sherlock mirrors it.

They find Seb the next day and slap him all the way to tears. Sherlock gets a sprained wrist for attempting to knee him in the balls. He skulks at John as they walk home on opposite streets.

"Say you're sorry," he calls. John laughs again – this time he's the mean one – and feels an exhilaration he's never felt before as he looks at Sherlock's face.

"You never say sorry; why should I?"

Sherlock holds up the skull and steps into the middle of the street. It's good that this street isn't particularly busy at this time of the day. "Fine," he says, and John wonders why Sherlock's wasting a dare on making him apologise. That's not very Sherlock.

"So?" he asks, stepping out into the street, meeting him halfway.

"Kiss me."

The words throw John for a curve. He blinks and stares and wonders if he's heard his friend right or if Sherlock's truly lost his mind. "What?"

"I'm not going to repeat myself." A cab pulls up behind them, honking. Sherlock steps onto the roof of the cab, grinning impishly at John. John follows, ignoring the indignant surprise of the cabbie.

"Fine," he says, reaching for the skull. Sherlock intercepts him by pressing their lips together.

It's a rush, it's exhilaration – it's an expanding bubble of happiness and a contrary deluge of emotions. John holds Sherlock close, wanting him so much closer and he realises that yes, this is what he wants – to stand on the top of a cab with Sherlock Holmes and snog him senseless for the world to see. The realisation scares and excites him simultaneously. The cabbie yells at them to get off the car and they oblige, running down a back alley laughing, hand-in-hand – and Sherlock stops at a gate, draws John close, and kisses him with a smile on his face. Slow and soft, more gentle this time.

The skull trades hands.

"Kiss me again," John demands, grabbing Sherlock's scarf and tugging him closer, gently.

"We don't repeat dares," Sherlock replies.

"Fine. Hold me tighter." John leans against the brick wall; Sherlock presses their bodies together, wraps his arms around the torso of his shorter friend. "Love me," John whispers into his ear, the skull dropping from his hands as Sherlock captures his lips in yet another kiss and it's slow, sweet torture and bliss. Heaven and yet a slight undertone of hell.

"Game's on," Sherlock murmurs against John's lips, and those two words make John freeze. They make something cold and ugly curl within his gut. They freeze him all over. He pulls away.

"Is it a game to you?" he asks quietly. Sherlock frowns, trying to hide his startled expression at this sudden withdrawal.

"You had the skull," he points out.

John glares. "Don't. Don't mention that. If you're going to play with my heart like this as part of the game, then I call a time-out."

"What for?" Sherlock tilts his head to the side, frowning.

"What for? It's obvious! We can't do this if it's only going to hurt us, Sherlock. You might not have a heart, but I do and it hurts my heart to know you're toying with me as part of the game. So don't."

Sherlock laughs bitterly, the smile not reaching his eyes. "We don't call time-outs on the game," he points out.

"Now we do." John takes several deep breaths. He really does try his best to make it look as if he doesn't care, that Sherlock playing with his heart isn't the most devastating thing he's ever seen.

He walks away, leaving Sherlock standing there.

* * *

><p>Sherlock stands at John's door. John glares, disappointment and anger bubbling in his stomach.<p>

"I told you not to come here." It's an accusation, a barb thrown in Sherlock's face. The other boy flushes; John continues to glower and knocks the skull out of Sherlock's hands. It rolls down the pavement, into the bushes. Sherlock stares into John's eyes, seemingly searching.

"Does it matter to you?" John asks, breaking eye contact. "Does it matter to you at all, playing with my life, my heart? Am I just your plaything?" His voice is venomous, tinged with hurt. Sherlock hears it; his shoulders slump.

"Obviously not –" he begins, but John shakes his head.

"We're on a time-out for eighteen years, Sherlock."

"John –" It looks as if all of the breath has been knocked out of Sherlock's body, and it takes all of John's willpower to remain steady, resolute.

"No exceptions. I want to be a doctor, to save people like my mum. We can't all be selfish _bastards_ –" at that, he hurls the words like its intended insult, almost spitting them in Sherlock's face, "like you."

Sherlock reels, but quickly catches himself, squares his shoulders. "Game," he replies coldly, stalking away for the skull.

* * *

><p>Harry forces John to choose between her and Sherlock, between boredom and excitement. The choice is obvious; John's steely blue eyes tell her the answer. She yells herself hoarse in a drunken rage – she and Clara are already arguing and Clara's gone out for the night, stormed out in a huff – and screams at John to get out, to get out of her sight because he's not her brother if he chooses a petty game over his own flesh and blood.<p>

It's not just a game, John thinks as he enlists for the RAMC. It's the thrills that accompany it. It's the joy of being with Sherlock. It's Sherlock and his brilliant mind and beautiful eyes.

Eighteen years pass. John hears news about Sherlock, who has dropped out of university to set up shop as a consulting detective. He doesn't hear from him directly, though; Sherlock has at least the decency to respect the rules of the game. It doesn't mean he doesn't miss him.

It takes an Afghan bullet to the shoulder and a psychosomatic limp to drive John's path back to Sherlock's, exactly eighteen years to the day of their first kiss and goodbye.

* * *

><p>"It's our skull," John notes, after Sherlock deduces everything that's happened to him with a single glance.<p>

"Yes, it is." Sherlock's older, taller – still impossibly, stupidly tall – but the unruly dark curls and bright Glasz eyes are still the same. He's grown more haggard, too, with shadows under his eyes and prominent cheekbones. Still, he is so beautiful that it takes John's breath away.

The skull changes hands one exhilarating chase later, when John realises that he can run without the cane after he and Sherlock pursue a cabbie throughout the streets of London. It changes back, when John chases after Sherlock and shoots the cabbie through the window. They laugh about it over dim sum and fortune cookies, and Sherlock's failure to predict the fortunes makes John breathless with laughter.

Their game is back, and John remembers exactly how much he loves playing it. They walk out on ASBOs, fight with chip-and-PIN machines, drive Scotland Yard up the wall. They solve murders and save people, and when the first signs of a new game appear – a new, timed game with hostages and puzzles – John can't help but feel the clenches of jealousy in his gut.

Sherlock gives him the skull as he goes out to meet Sarah, and John gives it back at the pool as Sherlock raises the gun towards a discarded bomb vest.

That dare doesn't come to fruition.

* * *

><p>Sherlock nabs an ashtray from Buckingham Palace, and gives the skull to John with a broad grin. John sets off Irene Adler's smoke alarm. When John tosses Sherlock onto the bed afterwards, insisting he get more sleep, he can't help but imagine Sherlock flying, flying through childish cardboard clouds.<p>

"Lestrade, we've had a break-in at Baker Street," Sherlock says over the phone. "Send over your least irritating officers in an ambulance. What? No, we're fine. It's the intruder. He fell out of a window."

Sherlock looks over at John and at the American, grinning. John nods. The American falls out of the window more times than either of them are willing to admit, and the skull changes hands once more. John relinquishes the skull to Sherlock after he cracks the code on Irene's phone – taking her pulse in the process – and the two of them chuckle about another broken heart.

Sherlock takes the skull when he goes to save Irene. John knows, and pretends she's back in America.

* * *

><p>"You locked me in the lab," John notes, eying the skull sitting on the picnic table. Sherlock looks sheepish. "You locked me in that bloody lab."<p>

"It was all strictly laboratory conditions; you were never in any real danger," Sherlock replies. "Besides, you dared me to take Henry to Dewar's Hollow. We're even."

"You thought the drug was in the sugar," John snickers. "Well, it wasn't in the sugar. You were wrong."

"A bit, yes, but –"

"Admit it. You were _wrong_."

"Won't happen again," Sherlock replies, in a casual tone that John doesn't believe for a second. His expression turns serious in a matter of seconds. "Look, John, I should tell you that the… things I said in the graveyard… well, they weren't part of the game."

John nods, and Sherlock continues. "You really are my friend. Probably my only friend. And I don't like to tell you this because you might think it's part of the game."

It's not quite a love confession, John knows. But it's enough.

* * *

><p>Sherlock is at the roof of St. Bart's. John looks up, heart suddenly grasped and stabbed by an icy hand, painful and shocking.<p>

"Step away from that edge, Sherlock," he hisses into his mobile, hands reaching up for Sherlock as if he could grab his hand. Sherlock reaches out as well, looking down at him. John can hear the sobs, and it doesn't quell the lump in his own throat.

"This phone call, it's… it's my note," Sherlock says, and dread inches up John's throat like bile. No, this couldn't be happening.

"No, Sherlock, don't you dare. I dare you not to jump." John tries to run closer, but Sherlock warns him to stay where he is. John hates it, the feeling of utter helplessness, the feeling of being rooted to the spot with horror and dread and _knowing that he could still save Sherlock if he could just move from where he was being forced to stand_. "Sherlock, that's a dare! I dare you to step away!"

"Goodbye, John," Sherlock says, and those words steal away the breath in John's lungs as he screams Sherlock's name, rushes towards him in a harebrained attempt to catch him. He doesn't make it.

Molly hands John the skull afterwards, and he has every impulse to break it, to destroy it, but he doesn't. He moves out; the limp comes back; he visits Sherlock's grave to lay flowers every month for three years, not noticing the dark-coated man watching him in the distance.

* * *

><p>John's wedding to beautiful blonde Mary Morstan is interrupted by the last person he expects or wants to see, the person who broke his heart by breaking his face falling from a hospital building. Or so he thought.<p>

The skull he left on Sherlock's grave rolls out to the altar, knocking against his leg gently. John looks behinds him, sees Sherlock, and does a double take. He frowns, turns away, and next to him Mary sees their exchange and the skull and her eyes fill with tears.

"Do you, John Hamish Watson, take Mary Morstan as your lawfully wedded wife?"

Sherlock mouths no.

John says yes.

* * *

><p>A heart for a heart. John thinks they're even now. But he still feels a pang of remorse at the melancholy in Sherlock's eyes, the unsaid words on his face.<p>

They're at the reception, off in a quiet corner. Mary's talking to her friends, shooting nervous looks in John's direction. John looks at Sherlock, wondering exactly how he managed to survive that fall. He doesn't ask.

"I did it to save you," Sherlock tells him. "It wasn't part of the game. I fell because Moriarty told me to, and I lived because you dared me to."

What he doesn't say are those three words, but John can feel them in every word he _does_ say. He's slightly surprised – he'd expected anger, _go to hell_, _you broke your promise_ – but he's more surprised at himself, surprised that he nods and takes it in stride because he'd expected anger, _go to hell_, _you broke your promise_ from himself to Sherlock.

"Cover up a murder," he says, handing the skull to Sherlock. "The game is on."

Sherlock's laugh is rich, deep.

* * *

><p>The murder of Mr. Wright remains unsolved. The evidence hints at his wife Minnie, but the police can't link her to a motive or wholly prove her guilt. They don't know that Sherlock had solved the case while lingering in the kitchen and had then quickly cleaned everything up – straightening out the embroidery, hiding the wrung canary, washing the pots and pans and the dirt-covered dishcloth.<p>

John laughs at that as they sit across from each other at Baker Street, in their usual chairs as if nothing has changed, as if there isn't a golden band on the fourth finger of John's left hand that binds him to another.

Sherlock dials Lestrade, tells him he's found the murderer of Mr. Wright trying to break into 221B. They trash the flat – they've only ten minutes – and Sherlock shoos John out just as the police arrive and yells at Lestrade for not apprehending the deranged psychopath before he tried to garrotte him. John is still laughing as he drives away in a nicked police car, the rest of the Met hot on his heels.

Yes, this is the way to live. Good old Sherlock! This is better than murders, better than cases, better than chasing criminals. This is better than the blood of the battlefield, better than stitching up fallen comrades while stuffing their guts back in, better than the sound of gunfire and danger. This is better than the seven-per-cent solution, better than nicotine patches, better than caffeine or alcohol or marijuana, LSD, heroin. This is better than sex, better than breathing.

This is the game of their lives, and John doesn't see the petrol lorry until he's far beyond the speed limit and hurtling into it before he knows what's hit him.

* * *

><p>Molly show Sherlock into the room, and looks away when the detective inhales sharply at the body on the bed. Burnt from head to toe, hooked to life support, the grisly body steals away all the breath in Sherlock's body. The skull sits on the bedside table.<p>

"John?" Sherlock gasps, moving closer.

The body doesn't respond, and from the way Sherlock's shoulders heave with dry sobs, the world has fallen out from under his feet.

"What have I done, John?" he pleads, taking the now badly-burnt skull. "If only I'd known…"

It's heartbreaking, really, seeing the great and mighty sociopath being reduced to a sobbing little boy. The look in his eyes is lost – lost without his blogger, his oldest playmate. His John.

It would be more heartbreaking, John thinks as he stumbles back to his room with Mary to get the glass shards removed from his head, if it wasn't so damn funny.

* * *

><p>Sherlock's halfway to Baker Street when he realises it.<p>

* * *

><p>John sits on the hospital bed as the doctor stitches up his brow. He really is ridiculously lucky, walking away from an explosive car accident with only glass in his brows and shallow cuts along his cheek and torso. But then again, he did leave Afghanistan with only a wounded shoulder and a psychosomatic limp. Worse things have happened to unluckier people.<p>

* * *

><p>Sherlock can't help but feel proud of John for outsmarting him as he turns the cab around.<p>

* * *

><p>John gets up, ignoring Mary's protests. He runs away, heading for the entrance to the hospital, and she chases him to the doors, anxiously pleading with him to return and get his stitches done. It's raining outside; he'd catch his death of cold if he doesn't put on his jacket – and still John runs, shoving open the doors of the hospital and rushing into the downpour.<p>

Sherlock is there; the cab has pulled up to the kerb, and John's face breaks into a smile at Sherlock's reproachful grin.

"Your deductive powers are diminishing if idiotic John Watson can outsmart you," he quips.

"Rubbish." Sherlock hands him the skull, his grin broadening. "I was just in shock."

"Sentiment?" John asks, ignoring Mary's pleas to return before he catches pneumonia, to return to her and normality. It's her or Sherlock, ordinary or extraordinary, and it's not much of a choice.

"Sentiment," agrees Sherlock, and their lips meet, fitting together as if they'd always belonged.

* * *

><p>"My mum once played dares," John tells Sherlock as they stand at the top of the Reichenbach Falls, hand-in-hand. Together they would beat the game. Together, they would live their dream of an extraordinary life – and love, but Sherlock never openly acknowledges that.<p>

"What was the craziest thing she did?" Sherlock asks, squeezing John's hand.

"She flew," John replies. "That's something you've never dared me to do."

"And there were some that you never dared me to do, but I would have done gladly," Sherlock mutters, looking down at the mist rising from the rushing water. "Eating ants, singing in the rain, loving you far too much…" he trails off.

"You did the last one," John points out.

"Not well enough. Sentiment's not my area."

"You saved me, and I saved you. A heart for a heart, no matter what Moriarty said about burning them." John leans in, wraps his arms around Sherlock. "That's enough."

They share one last kiss. There is no one here, no one except them and the skull on the ledge next to them and the roaring of the Reichenbach. Sherlock smiles against John's lips, drawing him as close to him as possible.

Hand-in-hand, they leap off the ledge and over the falls. John's never flown before, and he thinks it's beautiful. Falling is just like flying, except with a more permanent destination, and John doesn't care about that because he has never felt more alive or loved.

* * *

><p>"You forgot 'boner'," Sherlock tells John.<p>

They're old and wrinkly, sitting across from each other in the garden of a cottage on the beach, on the downs of Sussex. The buzzing of bees fills the air.

"There's only so much I could think of in one go; _hang on_." John laughs, though, and Sherlock laughs with him. Their fingers grasp each other, and as they kiss John thinks of everything that could have happened before.

He thinks of two little boys sharing a first shy kiss in a moonlit room.

He thinks of two teenage boys snogging on the roof of a cab.

He thinks of two adult men kissing on the landing of their central London flat.

The images, imagination and memory, blur together until it's hard to tell which is which. Which is the game, which is reality – but in the end, it doesn't matter.

It starts as it ends, with a skull, a boy, and a game that ends at a waterfall.


End file.
